The Crystal Ship
by Catherine Pugh
Summary: Set in 1969: Mary Ann and the Professor discover a massive crop of hemp on the island; the rules are breaking down everywhere, from the mainland to the island. Based on "The Crystal Ship" by the Doors.


1969

The Professor and Mary Ann pedaled the bamboo car over to the south side of the island one afternoon to pick blackberries. A few months ago, Mary Ann had suggested making a stash of blackberry wine for medicinal purposes, since Mr. Howell had drunk most of his stash in the meantime.

The day was a scorcher: 98º in the sun and very humid. Mary Ann had on her little gingham swimsuit cover, a wide straw hat, and her pair of canvas skimmers. The Professor, in a rare shedding of modesty, had opened his shirt buttons a little lower than usual for better ventilation. He didn't want to get sunburnt on his back, so he kept his shirt on.

"What's this music on the radio, Mary Ann? IS it music?"

"I'm not sure, I wasn't paying much attention. They stopped playing my soap opera, they're playing this weird stuff now."

They had brought along the radio for a noise distraction. The station was playing some strange stuff, thought the Professor, even weirder than those Mosquitoes. The rock music sounded heavier, more threatening, stranger. He was fascinated by the sound and impressed with the man's singing, but he couldn't understand what on earth the lyrics were about.

He wondered what was happening back home. He'd hear snippets on the news sometimes. They knew about the moon landing. They knew about the death of Bobby Kennedy. But they had no idea what people looked like. For all they knew, they were probably completely covered with hair by now. The world was moving in strange directions, and they were perpetually kept in 1964.

Today's adventure proved successful. The island was full of wonderful blackberries.

"How do you know how to make wine, Mary Ann? Who taught you?" the Professor asked, filling his berry basket.

"I learned a lot from my dad and my grandfather," she replied, wiping sweat off her brow. It dripped off her chin and trailed down her chest, disappearing under her neckline. The Professor tried not to notice as she continued. "Grampa had a still in an underground tornado shelter, believe it or not. During Prohibition, he made a lot of money selling moonshine until he got shot at by the police."

"Good heavens. I had no idea you had such a colorful past."

Mary Ann smiled. "Farm life can be rough if there's a drought. The still money helped them through a few bad years. It paid for a few secretarial classes for me when I finished high school. Let's try and pull out that bramble, it's being choked by vines."

The Professor put on some gloves and yanked on the bramble as she kneeled beneath him, ripping the vines. When he looked down, he could see plenty under her shirt, and the view made him swallow hard. It was getting harder for him to go out alone with Mary Ann without wanting to kiss her.

"So, do you have any secret stories, Professor?" she asked, elbowing him gently in the shin.

"A few," he replied with a secret smile, helping her to her feet. "I might have been one of the leading Scoutmasters in the country, but even I have a few stories."

"I wish you'd tell me one."

"And lose my high-salaried teaching position?"

Mary Ann laughed. "You lost it when you were declared dead back home, remember?"

The Professor sighed. Mary Ann had brought up something he didn't like to think about. He remembered how much his family had worried and fretted when his older brother Teddy went off to fight in the Battle of Midway. The irony was that to his folks, he was the one who died in the Pacific instead, during peacetime, on a trip to research ferns.

The Professor's face clouded over and he got quiet as he resumed picking berries. Mary Ann took a quick break to gaze upon her companion's sun-tanned arms, took note of the way the occasional sea breeze ruffled his hair, and wondered what he was thinking.

-o0o-

Mary Ann popped a blackberry in her mouth and thought about the Professor. It couldn't hurt, of course.

She'd had a minor crush on Gilligan when they first landed here, but familiarity stained their friendship with the brush of siblinghood. She tried to date him during the first year, but he made it clear early on that he wanted to remain friends. So they did, and Mary Ann finally had that older brother she'd always wanted.

The opposite effect happened with the Professor. At first, he had seemed older, aloof and untouchable, much like her high school English teacher, Mr. Jenkins. Mary Ann had always liked older men much more than the twerps in her hometown. Boys her age weren't interesting. No offense to Gilligan, but he was more concerned about catching butterflies than really talking. But the Professor, he was interesting.

It seemed certain that he would fall for Ginger, who was much more glamourous and accomplished and aggressive than she was. Over the years, however, Mary Ann and the Professor become very close friends indeed. She'd started helping him more with his science experiments and research, and he trusted her with his life, especially the day she saved him from being bitten by a poisonous snake. Her experience back home with rattlers had kept him from either an amputated leg or death.

But something about him caught her attention this afternoon. Maybe it was the heat and seeing a bigger glimpse of his chest, but she couldn't take her eyes off of him. His jawline. The bead of sweat on his brow. The way his Adam's apple moved up and down when he talked.

She felt her pulse quicken as she realized she was staring at him. She had to break the tension. She knew him well enough to sense his moods. He was rarely in a bad mood, but when he got into his gloom and despair mode, very little could snap him back in to being jovial, and it could make for a long afternoon of despairing over lava flow or volcanic gases.

"I'm sorry, Professor," Mary Ann said, realizing the Professor's jovial mood had switched. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings or anything."

"No, no, nothing like that, Mary Ann. I was just reminded of something that made me feel sad." He looked at the blackberry brambles, which had mostly been picked clean. "Well. We've just about hit all of the good ones. Hmm - we should go up that hill over there and see if there are any other blackberry bushes over the clearing. We could transplant some of these wild ones and actually make a really nice patch closer to camp if necessary."

"I was thinking the same thing, Professor. That was one of my chores on the farm. I ate so many blackberries one summer," she said wistfully. "Sometimes I miss it, but really, being here isn't too different."

"I feel the same way, sometimes."

-o0o-

They picked up their baskets and scrambled up a small cliff. No blackberries, but there was quite a surprise.

"HEMP PLANTS. My goodness," the Professor said.

"Hemp!" Mary Ann exclaimed in echo. "You mean…"

"We can make ropes and all sorts of useful things with the fibers. Shoes, clothing, paper, skin care, you name it."

"Ahhh…I hear you can also smoke it," Mary Ann said, laughing.

"Yes, you can," the Professor said wryly. "Ah…Mary Ann?"

"Hmm?"

"This stuff would be very potent to smoke, indeed."

"Professor!" She stood in front of him, hands on her hips, tapping her feet in mock sternness. "And how would you know?"

"Very well. Don't you know we science eggheads know the most about chemical makeup of low grade narcotics?" He looked around and picked off one of the flowers. "Good lord, just….wow, just look at that." Mary Ann walked over and examined the bud.

"So, you've smoked reefers? I can't believe it, Professor. You always seemed like such a square!"

"Oh, good. That took me years to cultivate. Alright, I was a bit of a scamp in my youth, I'm afraid. I had to buckle down and go to college, or get sent overseas during Korea."

Mary Ann shifted her feet and gazed over the weed field.

"My older brother fought in the Pacific during the War," the Professor explained. "I was 17 when the war ended and Teddy returned. They gave marijuana cigarettes to soldiers. Ted started smoking it a lot when he got back; he had a lot of trouble getting back to normal life – shellshock and malaria and all that."

Mary Ann nodded, fascinated by the story.

"I partook in a bit myself. It's perfectly harmless in moderation, despite what you've been told in the movies."

Mary Ann, to the Professor's surprise, took the bud out of his hand and smelled it. "What does it do to you?"

"Makes you hungry, mostly. You feel a bit drunk without the nausea or hangover. It can even be added to food."

"Ooh. Can we try it?"

The Professor looked around, as if he were afraid of being caught. It was silly, he knew, but he didn't really want to shatter his reputation with the others. When he was satisfied with no one being in the vicinity, he nodded and took her hand. She picked up the radio, and they walked down to the glade by the waterfall.

-o0o-

"I can't believe we're doing this," he said, sitting on a rock by the stream. It was shady there, slightly cooler. "I feel like a teenager again."

"I feel so bad!" she giggled. "Well, not really."

"Now, the trick is, how to smoke it." He looked around the area, then picked up a small coconut husk and a piece of bamboo. "Ahh. This will come in handy," he said.

"What's that for?"

"Fortunately, I happen to know a little something about the making of bongs."

-o0o-

Twenty minutes later, the Professor had carved a rather nice bong out of the coconut and bamboo. He placed some marijuana in the pipe, took a match out of his pocket, and lit it.

"It smells strange," Mary Ann said, after a moment.

"It's extremely potent." He took a hit from the bong and closed his eyes. "Good lord, that's really nice."

He passed it to her and showed her how to inhale. She gamely tried it. She coughed a little, but got the hang of it. They finished it off a few minutes later.

"How do you feel?" he asked her, relaxing against the rock wall.

"Terrific," she replied, with a dopey smile. "This is the greatest invention you've ever come up with, Professor." She pointed at the contraption. "I always knew you were a genius, but you're REALLY a genius. This stuff is great."

The Professor gave her a rather lengthy lecture about THC's scientific properties, chemical makeup and biological effects on the human brain. Something struck Mary Ann as very funny, and she started to laugh. And couldn't stop. She laid down on the rock and laughed so hard the Professor thought she would fall into the pond. He started laughing with her.

"I forgot how funny I find everything," he said.

"YEAH!" she replied. The Professor started to launch into a history lesson when she started with the peals of laughter again.

"I'm feeling much better," he said, closing his eyes and smiling.

They sat there in silence, listening to the radio and just riding the wave of calm. The Professor mellowed out much more – remarkably, he was finally beginning to relax his over-analytical mind a bit to enjoy the sounds he was hearing. The song on the radio featured organ music, and the singer deeply crooned like the singers of his youth. His imagination was curiously inspired now. He shook his head a bit in time to the music. Mary Ann was preoccupied with making a little doll out of a hibiscus flower and a palm frond.

"I see all sorts of figures in the cumulus cloud formations today," the Professor said, pointing at the sky. "Look, that one is shaped like a gingerbread man. I haven't had gingerbread since 1964. Did you know I love gingerbread, Mary Ann? It's my favorite."

"Mmm. That reminds me. I'm really hungry," she said, the tone of her voice much mellower than usual. "Let's have some blackberries."

"Oh, yeah. I'm simply ravenous."

She pulled over a basket of blackberries and fed him a couple. Within five minutes practically all of the blackberries they had spent toiling upon all afternoon had been consumed. Mary Ann had some blackberry juice on her face. She looked ridiculous.

-o0o-

For as long as he could remember, the Professor had held a secret crush on Mary Ann, too afraid to tell anyone; too afraid to try anything besides dancing with her at parties and taking her out on excursions or nature walks. For a long time, he hid behind excuses - but in the cloudy haze of spent grass, his inhibitions were gone at last.

"Lie down," she said. "Put your head in my lap." He obeyed, relishing the strange sensation of proximity to her, and he stared back up at the clouds. At long last, Mary Ann felt comfortable enough to run her fingers through his hair. The sensations heightened his sense of relaxation.

"Mary Ann?" he reached up and touched her chin. "You have a little something on your face." He wiped the blackberry juice off the corner of her mouth. She closed her eyes and smiled as he sat up.

"May I…kiss you?" he asked tenderly, a little fearfully.

"Oh yes, Professor," she replied, dopily looking into his eyes. He leaned in and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and they leaned against the rock wall, kissing. Mary Ann felt high as a kite from both the marijuana and the euphoria of feeling his lips against hers. "I feel like I'm floating," she murmured.

"That's the THC," he whispered in her ear, brushing his lips over her earlobe.

"You know, we've been here almost six years now and this is the first day I haven't cared whether I go back to Kansas or not."

His hand brushed over her hair, pulling out the pigtails, letting her brunette hair fall loose. The vision made him catch his breath.

"I'm truly content for the first time in my life," he admitted. "Well. Our time on the island has just been made infinitely more tolerable, hasn't it?"

"Yeaaaaah," Mary Ann replied dreamily, running her hand over his cheek. She laid down in his lap this time, as he wound her hair though his fingers.

-o0o-

"Thurston, do you see what I see?"

Mr. and Mrs. Howell were walking along the path, and, seeing the bamboo car, thought they might ask the Professor and Mary Ann for a ride back to camp, as "Thurston's poor tootsies hurt."

"Why, isn't that the Professor, and…and Marriawwwn?" he drawled, in his affected accent.

"It is!" They ducked behind a tree to spy more closely. Mrs. Howell put her opera glasses to her nose.

"They're…why, they're in love!" Mrs. Howell exclaimed. "Oh goodness gracious."

"Lovey, it's precious, isn't it?"

Mrs. Howell smiled. "Yes, the darlings. We should leave them alone. Oh, but all sorts of ideas can happen when you're so far away from society. It isn't proper."

"We weren't proper."

Mrs. Howell blinked and smiled. "No, we weren't, were we? Ah, you're right, Thurston dear. But what about your tootsies?"

"They'll be fine enough to make it home." He put his finger to his lips. "Shhh."

-o0o-

The two had fallen asleep, and it was starting to get dark. The temperature had dropped to a cooler 80 or so, and the sea breeze had changed with the tide. Mary Ann woke up first.

"Professor," she said. "Wake up. We should head back."

He awoke, his head strangely clear, and he smiled. "Ah, yes, goodness, how long have we been asleep?"

"Enough for the radio batteries to die out."

"Oh my, yes, we had better go back." He took her hand and squeezed it. "Well, we failed in the blackberry department. Should we go on another excursion soon?"

"I'd like that very much," she replied, smiling at him conspiratorially. "…Roy."

"I haven't been called that in so long," he said. "It's nice to have a name again."

"It's nice to have you."


End file.
